1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an improved granular or powdery detergent composition comprising an alkyl ether sulfate, branched alkyl sulfate, alkane sulfonate, vinylidene olefin sulfonate, internal olefin sulfonate, or nonionic surfactant, as a main component, and containing a polyoxyethylene alkyl or alkenyl ether as an anti-caking agent, whereby to reduce the tendency for said composition to cake or agglomerate.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Recently, the eutrophication problem caused by the use of sodium tripolyphosphate as a builder in powdery detergents has become important. It is now desired to reduce the content of sodium tripolyphosphate in detergents. In order to solve this problem, utilization of a surface active agent having a detergency that is not degraded by water hardness has recently been proposed and alkylethoxy sulfate salts and nonionic surfactants have attracted attention in the art. However, powdery detergents containing these surface active agents tend to cake and, therefore, they cannot easily be put into practical use.
The present invention relates to an improvement in granular or powdery detergent compositions comprising at least one member selected from hard water-resistant surface active agents such as alkylethoxy sulfate slats, alkylphenylethoxy sulfate salts and ethylene oxide-type nonionic surface active agents and other surface active agents having a tendency to cake, such as branched alkyl sulfate salts, alkane-sulfonate salts, vinylidene-type olefin-sulfonate salts and internal olefin-type sulfonate salts, in which the caking tendency is remarkably reduced.
The caking property of a granular or powdery detergent has bad influences not only on the manufacturing steps but also on the handling of the detergent in households. The commercial value of a detergent having a tendency to cake is very low. Accordingly, it is very important to prevent caking of granular or powdery detergents.
It is known from experience that the caking property of a granular or powdery detergent is greatly influenced by the kind of the surface active agent contained therein. For example, sodium benzene-sulfonate and sodium toluene-sulfonate are effective for preventing caking of branched alkylbenzene-sulfonate salts and sodium sulfosuccinate is effective for preventing caking of linear alkylbenzene-sulfonate salts. But is is said that the anti-caking effect of sodium sulfosuccinate is not high for the former surface active agents and the anti-caking effect of sodium benzene-sulfonate or sodium toluene-sulfonate is not high for the latter surface active agents.
Although the above-mentioned surface active agents having a tendency to cake possess an excellent detergency, granular or powdery detergent compositions containing these surface active agents tend to cake and their commercial values are very low.